Anhedonia as a function of non-affective interpretation of ambiguous stimuli and threshold for affective and neutral...

A theory that schizophrenic anhedonia-the failure to express pleasure-is associated with a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli as neutral rather than emotion-laden and arises from selectively high perceptual thresholds for affective stimuli was tested. Seventy-six schizophrenic males were required to guess whether words presented to them tachistoscopically for extremely short periods were positive, negative or neutral in content. The high-anhedonic Ss were significantly more likely to guess neutral words and less likely to offer pleasant interpretations than the low-anhedonic sample, which suggests that anhedonia is associated with a tendency to interpret one's environment as lacking in positive emotional value. The tresholds of high-and low-anhedonic schizophrenic groups then were compared on pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral tachistoscopically-presented stimuli. In the only two significant differences in the latter analyses, high anhedonics showed greater tresholds for neutral stimuli than low anhedonics. These findings suggest that anhedonia is not mediated by peculiarly high tresholds for affective stimuli.